Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Time for Control

To mark the tenth anniversary of the 1991 Bush-Gorbachev unilateral
declarations on tactical nuclear weapons, UNIDIR and its collaborating
partners held a meeting in September 2001 at the United Nations in New
York. The meeting took place days after the terrible attacks against the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon on the 11th September.

At the UNIDIR meeting and many times since that fateful day, the issue
of terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction and, in particular,
fissile materials has been raised. The continuing lack of control over tactical
nuclear weapons means that there is a clear and present danger that tactical
nuclear weapons may have been, or may be in the future, stolen or sold to
those with an intent to use them for the purposes of terrorism.

Tactical nuclear weapons are a particularly dangerous category of
nuclear weapons. They are portable, often integrated into conventional
force structures and, in some cases, less well guarded than their strategic
counterparts. Despite the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives, there has
never been any formal agreement on the removal and elimination of
tactical nuclear weapons. Despite periodic updates on progress, data were
never agreed, only proportions of numbers to be eliminated or stored were
declared. Still today a great deal of uncertainty exists over the
implementation of the 1991 unilateral declarations.

Perhaps more worrying, there seems to be a renewed interest in this
category of nuclear weapons. Post September 11, in addition to the
concerns over the terrorist use of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials,
there have been discussions and debates, in public and in private, on the
potential use by States of small, low yield nuclear weapons to attack
underground hideouts of terrorist leaders or terrorists' weapons
manufacturing facilities. In addition the use of nuclear weapons as a
response to chemical and biological weapons attacks is also being debated.
None of these debates has led to official policy changes, but with the
increasing concerns over the long-term adherence to the comprehensive
nuclear test ban treaty, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that new
small, short-range and “useable” nuclear weapons could be on the horizon.

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